


Epilogue

by historymiss



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Circumstance eventually forced us all to leave the Champion's side.' Eight stories, and how they ended. Kind of a carry-on from my earlier fic Ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epilogue

The clan buries their Keeper under a softly rounded dome of earth, the half-remembered songs keening through the air as flowers are planted to bring the place new life. The First, still frail with unexpected grief, tells of a woman with a throaty laugh and a keen sense of humour, who took great pleasure in acting just as a Keeper shouldn't. A woman who trod lightly through the dangers of the world, not blind to them but unafraid. Who had gone out of her way to protect the clan from every kind of demon and spirit. She would never talk about where she came from, but sometimes when she was well into her cups she'd sing some songs a Keeper certainly shouldn't know, and when she prayed alone she added strange human names to those of her adoptive clan.

Later, legends hold that the barrow is haunted. Strange lights and whisperings are heard there at night. The village close by fears the clearing, and will not enter it. But the Dalish that pass by take care to pay their respects, and their children delight in the daisies that grow there all year round.

\---

Slavers have a legend. Just the one. They're not a naturally superstitious species but one tale gets trotted out over campfires again and again. A creature of darkness. Spiny, like an insect or a dragon. Veined in magic itself. It exists to hunt them and their kin, and it is totally without fear or mercy. It does not grow tired, and it only hungers for slaver blood. Once it catches your scent, you're through. They say it killed Tor's group, last summer. When they came to get the bodies it looked like a wild animal had ripped them apart.

They say it comes for you out of the night. They say it's the wrath of the Maker made solid. Years go by, and nobody hears of it, and then it strikes again. They say it will never die. Slavery's become a dangerous business in Thedas.

\---

Kirkwall's a city of orphans, now. Too many of those killed in the mage uprising had children, and too few of them had anyone else to take care of them. Shelters spring up all over the city and once again it's full of refugees from a different kind of blight. The largest is housed in what used to be a mansion in Hightown. Like many of its kind, it has protection from the guard. Every week someone comes to read to the kids- most are too young or too poor to have ever learned, and they sit in quiet anticipation as the strong, red-haired Guard lady holds up the book and points to the carefully painted pictures.

"There's the dragon. And here's the knight."

One girl raises a hand.

"Miss, have you ever fought a dragon?"

The Guard exchanges a look with her partner, and smiles thinly. "Yes. Twice." The look on her face precludes further discussion. "I don't recommend it." Her hand hovers over the next page. "Shall I turn it for you?"

The room erupts in a chorus of yes'es.

\---

There's no Circle in Kirkwall any more but mages continue to be born, continue to find their powers. It's even worse for some as power they've kept secret for many years is forced into the open by templar crackdowns, and a carefully built life is undone by one angry accusation. The lucky ones are directed to the ruin of a clinic in Darktown, where there's a fellow mage who can help them. If the lantern's lit, they know they'll be able to receive training and guidance.

Marik is almost dead on his feet when he arrives. He lived on the outskirts of the city when the uprising started, and a quirk of fate (a falling beam, a screaming girl) had led him to reveal the power he'd always kept locked away, a secret he'd hoped to keep to his grave. Rumour leads him to Darktown, and the last of his energy lets him stagger inside. Just before he collapses, he looks up into bright, kind eyes.

"You can call me Bethany." Her voice is calm, reassuring, that of a doctor with a patient. "Don't worry. You're safe now."

\---

The Second Chance doesn't have the best drink in town, and it doesn't serve the best food, but it's still the most popular tavern in Westport. Part of the appeal is in the fact that it's an actual boat, moored right up alongside the traders and pirates, an easy stagger for most of its customers. Every night, the ship is filled with laughing, drinking and (occasionally) fighting, although the latter's broken up before it gets too out of hand. The proprietress maintains that while it's good to blow off steam once in a while, she hasn't the money to replace the windows every week.

Blowing off steam is the theme at the Second Chance. You can find good, cheap booze and friendly women (and men) there. Most, however, just come to talk to the landlady. Isabela's aged well, her skin still smooth and dark like fine Antivan leather and her hair only showing the slightest silvering of grey.

Every year, on a certain day, she rings the bell behind the bar and everyone gets one drink free. Isabela pours her own and toasts the double-headed crest that adorns the far wall.

"To Hawke."

\---

Once upon a time, Marian Hawke believed in fairy tales. It was something she and her mother could have in common, away from the arguments about swordplay and teasing Carver and wearing skirts like a proper Amell lady should. She'd snuggle up on Leandra's lap and listen as her mother recited the stories she'd heard from her nurse many years ago. When she stopped, Marian would always look up and ask "and after that?".

And Leandra would smile and say "and then they lived happily ever after" and tickle her daughter until their shrieks of laughter brought Father running from the field, fire jumping in his hands.

These days, there's not much room for laughter. Marian sits and watches the man she thought she loved burn with blue fire and wonders if she ever really knew him at all. Her tale ended, she is living in a twilight world with a stranger who wears her lover's skin. She's grown used to waking up in a cold, empty bed. Gathering her sword and armour and following the trail he leaves (burnt buildings, armoured corpses torn in half) until she finds him again. Love has very little to do with it any more. Marian looks at Anders now and sees only a beast that needs to be controlled. She'll never admit it, but part of her wishes she'd been angry enough to finish what Justice had started, there in Kirkwall. Anders, she is pretty sure, died a long time ago.

This may not be true, but it makes looking at him more bearable.

\---

In the end, Hawke haunts Varric until the day he dies. How do you write a sequel to the world's greatest story? As many times as he retells the adventure of her life, embroidering the details, shifting the scenes, it ends in dust and ashes, a bitter taste lingering on the tongue, and he can do nothing to change it. He tries, though. Oh, Maker, he tries. Every tale he tells holds part of that fateful decade in Kirkwall, from the tales of the saucy pirate queen to his best-selling City Guard romances, but as Varric re-reads them all he can see in his mind's eye is that Gallows courtyard and the frozen expression on Hawke's face as she turns away from the wreck of the past ten years. He publishes anyway, retelling and re-writing in the hope that one day, it will have been enough and the true events will be gone, wiped away like they never happened. Not to that brave, bright girl who'd smiled at him that day in Hightown. 

All his stories do well save for one: the epic story of a brooding apostate is never finished. His cousins find it later, going through his things after they've tracked them to a shabby but lively inn in Lothering. This draft is not the first. The story's obviously been written and rewritten many times. It's a good enough tale- perhaps even one of his best- but the scroll is torn at the halfway point and search as they might they never find the missing piece.

They publish it anyway as an Unfinished Tale, and make a modest profit.

\---

Vengeance never looks back. Spirits don't have a sense of time. In the end, he sees a new world rise out of the old and yes, it is better. Somehow, though, it is empty, and try as he might he can never understand why.


End file.
